As part of their web makeover, the business owners were advised to get rid of their successful www.teachblacksmithing.com domain name, and use a brand new domain name with their company name in it instead.

And when the new website went live, their site disappeared from the Google results. Whereas they were previously in the top 10 for all their keyphrases, they now languished way down on pages 9 and 10 of the results.

And most importantly, they discovered their training bookings dried up.

The disaster was all down to changing their domain name.

We had a very quick discussion, Bob reverted back to his old domain name, and straight away he was back to getting bookings on his lovely new site direct as a result from regaining his high rankings in Google.

The mistake Bob made was not to plan for his domain name change. But to his credit, he spotted the problem, and quickly tried to figure out where things went wrong.

And even when you have a member of staff dedicated to managing the changeover process, it will still take months (potentially) for your site to regain its rankings in Google. Take a look at TKG’s blog where they document their domain name changeover process.

There are times when domain name changes are desirable or inevitable, and just like any change in your business marketing, success is all in the planning.

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0 responses to “Planning for a Domain Name Change”

I have been considering a change in domain name as my company name has changed. However for the very resons specified in your article, I have refrained from doing so. As it has now een over a year, I think it is long overdue. If I take all the necessary precautions, will I lose any ranking or traffic?